What He Said

(Well, isn't that what most of my posts say?)

Reaping the Whirlwind:

Zac Alstin on how Nazi thinking became our own.

In what sense did we win World War II?

(Via Catholic and Enjoying It!.)

Dialogue: Example Number One

Does the President want to reduce abortions? Or just the need for them? Is he ok with unneeded abortions? (Which pro-lifers will happily identify as all abortions currently being performed.) Enquiring minds want to know:

...and we're off:

Wendy Wright of Concerned Women of America writes in Human Events of the specific nature of the conversations that have taken place in the Obama - administration-sponsored meetings about abortion, seeking to find common ground:This meeting took place two days...

Read the whole thing.

(Via Via Media.)

Are There Any Pro-Abortion People Here?

Let's start the conversation here:

Twisted abortion logic:

A commenter here at SA (and many thousands of people before him) recently wrote:

Perhaps with a bit of reflection, Joe, you may realize that support for abortion rights is quite a different thing from support for abortion.

Does this type of statement make sense in any other case?  If not, why do people think it makes sense in the case of abortion?   Let’s try substituting some other practices, and see how it holds up.

Perhaps with a bit of reflection, you may realize that support for the right to rape is quite a different thing from support for rape.

Read the whole thing.

(Via Southern Appeal.)

The Vatican Has Spoken

and said that President Obama is not "pro-abortion". So that provokes a couple of questions:

What or who exactly is the "Vatican"?

And what does it mean to say that someone or some group is "pro-abortion"? Can we agree with the President that no one is "pro-abortion"?

Let's start with the first question:

Wiegel on L’Osservatore Romano’s “fideist credulity”:

My friends – smart people – are angrily scratching their heads over the latest squishy musings in L’Osservatore Romano.



I have posted about this here and here.  In the second case, the editor, who is a fine fellow and doing a pretty good job making the paper into something other than fishwrap, really blew it. 



Here is a piece by George Weigel in National Review online with my emphases and comments.

Parsing the Vatican Newspaper

It doesn’t always speak for the pope.



May 21, 2009, 4:00 a.m.

By George Weigel



[snip]
2. In the normal course of events, L’Osservatore Romano does not speak authoritatively for the Church in matters of faith, morals, or public-policy judgment. The exceptions are when a senior churchman offers a commentary on a recent papal document (an encyclical, for instance), or on those exceedingly rare occasions when an editorial in the paper is followed by three dots, or periods, a traditional convention signaling that the opinion being expressed is from “high authority.” No knowledgeable or responsible analyst of Vatican affairs would regard commissioned essays in L’Osservatore Romano, even if they appear on page one, as somehow reflecting an authoritative view from the Holy See or the Pope. The same is true for statements by the paper’s editors or editorials without the dots. [True.  As I have pointed out in the past, unsigned editorials usually have more weight.  And there are some which have clues that they are even more weighty.]

Read the whole thing.

(Via What Does The Prayer Really Say?.)